Shaping Families

Curbing Underage Drinking

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BRIAN: Out of all the drugs that are abused, it seems pretty clear that alcohol in our community at least is probably one of the worst in terms of its impact on our youth and our culture. 

BURTON: What can be done about our culture which seems to just accept that kids are going to drink? What can be done about merchants who seem to support underage and binge drinking by what they display in their stores? I’m Burton Buller and this is Shaping Families, where we look at tough issues facing families through the lens of faith.

MELODIE: And I’m Melodie Davis. This issue hits most of us who have raised or are raising teens and young adults. Football tailgate parties from college to the professional level seem to take massive drinking for granted.

BURTON: We’re talking to Dr. Brian Kelley—a father, professor and head of the psychology department at a small liberal arts college. He has also done a lot of research on the impact of alcohol and other substances on the adolescent brain, which we looked at last week. If you missed that program, you can listen to the podcast at our website, ShapingFamilies.com.

MELODIE: Today we’re looking at Brian’s efforts to educate families and communities, where too often the inclination is to look the other way and hope kids survive the phase.

BRIAN: I think a lot of parents are utilizing sort of an outdated model to work with young people when it comes to drinking. And that outdated model includes just trying to minimize the damage or risk associated with drinking. So the idea is, well, if you want to drink, I don’t want you to, but if you’re going to anyway, you can drink at the house, your friends come over here, we’ll take the keys away and we’ll make sure that no one drives home drunk. 

BURTON: Brian says there are two problems with that approach.

BRIAN: One is the kids who are told you can have a party at the house as long as you don’t drive drunk actually have higher rates of driving drunk. So that strategy just doesn’t work. Intuitively, it makes people feel good, but it doesn’t make things safe. Those kids end up drinking more and drinking and driving more. And what you’re doing is illegal. I’m not sure every parent who would have a kid at a party like that would appreciate them being served alcohol illegally. But the real issue is this: the research over the last ten years has clearly shown that alcohol impacts the adolescent brain in ways that are not good compared to even if somebody had alcohol before or after that age. 

BURTON: From Brian’s research and that of many others, experts know that adolescence is a unique period for brain development. 

BRIAN: Not only does it alter the development of the brain, but also, adolescents don’t really appreciate the impact that alcohol has on their behavior. They don’t realize how drunk they are, and that’s a problem. They don’t realize how impaired they are in terms of their motor behavior, in terms of their physical ability to drive. So even when you say to a youth, you know, whatever you do, don’t drink and drive, like, oh, I would never do that, well, once they’re drunk, you know, they end up not making good decisions ‘cause the good decision part of their brain isn’t developed and alcohol specifically impacts that part of the brain, so, sort of a double whammy. And I think most adults when they begin to drink, realize okay, I’m getting intoxicated, I shouldn’t drive for awhile and they can still make somewhat informed decisions. A youth is much more impaired in their decision making when it comes to drinking compared to an adult, even with the same blood alcohol level. So these parents, you know, think, well, I’m doing something good, in many ways are harming their youth’s brain development. And these are good parents sometimes, you know, trying to make good decisions. 

BURTON: What is a better approach for parents?

BRIAN: The best way to approach it is to simply say: look, we have a zero tolerance policy for alcohol and drugs and it’s not even that it’s a legal issue and it’s like, this is what you can and can’t do. It’s really an issue of preserving your own physical development and you know, making sure that you have every opportunity to be successful across your life. And you know, why damage your brain when you’re 13 or 15 or 17, when you know, we hope to send you off to college to use that brain and hope for you to get a job where you’ll also use that brain. 

BURTON: How much damage is actually done?

BRIAN: When your adolescent is drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes or using other drugs, what you’re really looking at is lost potential. You might be damaging the reward system such that later on in life things are less rewarding. You might be damaging the part of the brain that’s involved in planning, reasoning, organizing complex information and people wouldn’t know their brain was damaged. They would just be less fulfilled in what they do later in life and not really understand why. Its like, I wonder why I’m not as successful as I would like to be. I wonder why certain things are harder for me than they are for other people, or and then you think well, you know, the drug exposure developmentally has really sort of altered you’re your full potential. 

BURTON: Is it realistic to think society can curb underage drinking?

BRIAN: I’m not naïve to the extent that I think we can, you know, convince every child and every parent that this is, you know, not the best decision, but I think we can impact a great number of young people and I think that the best way to do that is probably through parents. 

Almost everyone who starts using drugs starts off using drugs that they pick up in their own house. Kids are getting alcohol from their parents. And a lot of it is indirect, I mean, most parents don’t give their kid a shot of whiskey or beer or wine, but they leave it laying around. And kids basically have run of the neighborhood from three to six and so it’s no surprise that alcohol and drug use occurs during that time, when parents think their kids are home doing homework. 

BURTON: Another dangerous time when kids reach adolescence is the weekend, when parents are relieved they can finally go out and leave their kids without a babysitter.

BRIAN: So they leave on a Friday night and kids have access to technology where they can communicate their parents’ lax provision within a matter of seconds and you know, 20 kids can be at that house. So most parties that occur, occur in people’s homes. And they’re drinking alcohol their parents have sitting there. 

BURTON: How can parents step up to the plate on this issue?

BRIAN: Parents have the ability to talk to their friends’ parents, set up a meeting in the neighborhood and say you know what, let’s all work together on this issue, you know, to make sure that on a Friday night there’s some parent around, maybe checking on some of these kids, if you know, some sort of like designated parent.

BURTON: Brian has some ideas for parents.

BRIAN: So there’s a couple of strategies. The first one, talk to your kids, be honest. I always love that approach. It seems to work so well. Be honest to your kid and say, you know what, we’re not perfect. When we were your age we made bad decisions, but we have new information now and this information tells us that these exposures to alcohol and drugs at your age are particularly bad. Worse than they would be for any other age across your life that you have control over. And the second is to decrease availability. And what I’ve discovered in all of my years of prevention work is that the number one predictor of use is availability. And the third, I guess, connects to the first, and that is lay down consequences that are very clear. I think sometimes you say well, you shouldn’t do this, it will damage your brain and we don’t want that to happen and we’ll be really mad. Well, what does really mad mean? Most kids appreciate concrete explanations. Part of it is developmental. So if a parent says if you drink, this will be the consequences, if you do this, this will be the consequences and this is your you know, the first time, second time, third time, and lay it down there, and I think with kids, they really appreciate their freedom. They like to listen to music, they like to go out and see movies with their friends and they like to you know, have a car. So there’s a lot of things parents can do that can encourage their kids to make good decisions. 

BURTON: When should parents first talk to their kids about drinking or drugs?

BRIAN: I’m not a big fan of now it’s time for the drug talk. I mean, this should be a developmental conversation that occurs in the car, at you know, at a restaurant over a meal, you know, on the way home from church, on the way, you know, to a ballgame, not just let’s sit down for an hour and you know, lay out the law here.

BURTON: Why do parents need to be concerned about college drinking?

BRIAN: Drinking is the number one problem on college campuses. I mean, it connects to every other problem that occurs. I’m a college professor, so I deal with students all the time and you know, I’ve taught at different schools and students are absent from class. Well, I overslept and you know, gosh, I got behind and I tried to get one of my other papers done so I skipped your class and then you find out well, why are you behind? Why are you having a hard time getting up? And when you get to the root of the problem, it’s like well, it’s drinking. And if you go to college its just really sad that virtually every event is surrounded by alcohol. When it comes to the homecoming football game, alcohol. When it comes to Friday night, people just playing cards, alcohol.

BURTON: Brian says that even retailers assist in creating an atmosphere encouraging heavy drinking.

BRIAN: If you go shopping, back to school shopping in August, what you’re gonna find is beer displays, like giant beer displays all over the store that you didn’t see in any other time in the summer. And I went to one of the local we’ll just call it hardware type stores, and I walked in, and the very first sort of end cap were a bunch of funnels, a bunch of tubes and a bunch of clamps. I finally got the manager and I said I really need to speak to the manager. I brought him over and I’m like what exactly are you selling here on this end cap? And people use that, of course, for drinking games. So I found it really sad that some of our local businesses went out their way to put together products that they know college students would buy for the most dangerous types of drinking that are out there. And this is the kind of drinking where people end up in the in the ER, sometimes dead. I’m like you’re contributing to alcohol poisoning. I’m like is that really what you want to do?

BURTON: How much does this impact Christian families?

BRIAN: Sure it would be great to sit here and say that the Christian family has overcome this problem, we have other problems to focus on, but the truth of the matter is, when Christian students go to college, their statistics aren’t that different than the general population. And I think that’s a pretty sad commentary of sort of what we’re doing in church. And I’m a youth director at my small church, and I see a lot of kids at college that have been highly involved in youth groups and highly involved in church and you know at their local level, regional level, and some even at the national level, these are highly involved kids that have, you know, gone off to college with scholarships and really good grades in high school. And they get there and they find themselves drinking within a week, and it’s just so much a part of the culture that I think sometimes that we forget that every kid is at risk. And I think it’s important to have that conversation with your with your children, and sometimes even your children’s friends. ‘Cause you can’t assume someone else is gonna do it. And I just think as a church, we really need to be sort of more proactive on some of these high risk issues.

BURTON: You’ve given us a lot to think about, Brian. Thanks for all your help as we’ve been looking at this topic these past two weeks. At our website, you’ll find links to Brian’s faculty web page including the many, many studies and published reports he’s participated in.

And now we’ll check in with our Media Matters reviewer, Steve Carpenter, who reviews a recent film on other difficulties of the teen years.

STEVE: I agree the issue of teenage drinking is a serious problem. Many people think of it as partying but in reality teenage abuse of alcohol and drugs often masks the pain they feel. This pain sometimes emerges as more extreme forms of destructive behavior, like suicide.

Mental illness and teenage suicide are not laughing matters. However, a recent film by director Ryan Fleck called A Kind of Funny Story deals with teenage angst in an appropriately lighthearted way. As the movie begins, stressed out teenager Craig, played by Keir Gilchrist, is feeling suicidal and checks himself into a hospital. Arriving at the emergency room he tells the clerk “I want to kill myself.” She nonchalantly hands him a clipboard and calmly insists, “Fill this out.” As Craig waits in the hospital lobby a bearded man in blue hospital scrubs and a white lab coat strikes up a conversation with him, offering fatherly advice. The confused teenager asks “Are you a doctor?” We later discover Bobby, the bearded man, is not a doctor but a co-patient with Craig on the hospital’s adult psychiatric ward. Craig finds himself mixed in with a variety of mental patients both young and old. There are many colorful patients on the ward including Solomon, a Hassidic Jew, and Muqtada, an Egyptian who hasn’t left his room in years.

Craig’s confinement is made more tolerable by Noelle’s presence. Played by Emma Roberts, Noelle is an attractive fellow teenager whose angst finds expression in cutting herself. Zach Galifianakis’s performance as Bobby is comic genius, while Academy Award nominee Viola Davis’s portrayal of the warm and wise attending psychiatrist, Dr. Minerva, is also excellent.

The film is a lot like the equally funny, but far more dark 1975 Academy Award winning film One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest which starred Jack Nicholson in a breakout performance. In both films, the fun is poked at how institutions deal with mental illness, not making fun of the persons with these brain diseases.

A Kind of Funny Story is rated PG-13 and may not be suitable for young audiences due to drug use, mild profanity and sexual situations. The last line tells the audience to “breath—live.” These words reminded me of Jesus’ encounter with his disciples, recorded in the gospel of John, chapter 20, verses 21 and 22 where He spoke peace, breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” Here on Shaping Families we point to Jesus, and the church, as a source of help in facing troubles ranging from teenage drinking, to the pain of mental illness, to the devastation of suicide.

Blessings in your work, worship and witness.

BURTON: Thanks, Steve. You can find Steve’s review and many more like it through links at the Shaping Families website, ShapingFamilies.com.

MELODIE: Again this week we’re offering a free leaflet called “Breaking the Student Drinking Culture.” It has stories and statistics on college drinking and how that impacts our society. You can request it from our ShapingFamilies.com website under Current Offer.

BURTON: We hope you appreciate the efforts this program makes to speak to current issues and we invite you support this work. To request the free leaflet by mail or to send a donation, write to Shaping Families, Box 22, Harrisonburg, VA 22803. That’s Shaping Families, Box 22, Harrisonburg, VA 22803. You can also donate at the website.

MELODIE: We hope you’ll join us next week as we talk to Jennifer Murch, an avid “mommy” blogger and stay-at- home mom. Until then, this is Melodie Davis . . .

BURTON: . . . and Burton Buller reminding you of the words from the old Crosby, Stills & Nash song: “Teach your children well. You, who are on the road, must have a code that you can live by.” Shaping Families is a production of the Mennonite churches.